


a fish hook, an open eye

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Abandon all hope ye who enter here, Ballet AU, F/F, F/M, I'm so sorry, TW: drug use, black swan inspired, dreamscape yakov/minako/lilia, everyone in this fic is unkind to everyone else, hell is other people i guess, not quite hate-sex, this zine was wonderful and lovely and along came sim with her dark cloud hate fic, tw: lilia strikes yakov once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 04:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18402890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: Lilia Baranovskaya is 27 when she finally makes Principal at the Bolshoi. It is 1992, and the world is changing fast. The Soviet Union has received last rites after dancing to its death, high on the fumes of Perestroika and Glasnost. Changing with the times, the Bolshoi has a young Creative Director: his name is Yakov Feltsman, and at 33 years old he is already famous for precisely three things. These are: 1) his arrest as a dissident, at age 19, when he was still a performer in St. Petersburg, 2) a furious temperament, circumspectly re-labeled as passion, and 3) an incredible ingenuity with modern ballet, the likes of which hasn’t been seen for decades and won’t be seen again for years to come.Lilia is a toy he winds up and makes spin at his leisure.Then Okukawa Minako climbs into the picture fresh off of her unexpected Benois win, and there's something about her that devours hearts and shatters every single one of Lilia's sugarplum dreams.





	a fish hook, an open eye

Lilia Baranovskaya is 27 when she finally makes Principal at the Bolshoi. 

It is 1992, and the world is changing fast. The Soviet Union has received last rites after dancing to its death, high on the fumes of _Perestroika_ and _Glasnost_. The Bolshoi has survived the Tsars and the communists, and it knows a winning argument when it sees one: the entire company has flung itself headlong into freedom. Nothing signals this more than the company’s young Creative Director, hired just two years ago. His name is Yakov Feltsman, and at 33 years old he is already famous for  precisely three things. These are: 1) his arrest as a dissident, at age 19, when he was still a performer in St. Petersburg, 2) a furious temperament, circumspectly re-labeled as _passion_ , and 3) an incredible ingenuity with modern ballet, the likes of which hasn’t been seen for decades and won’t be seen again for years to come. 

Yakov is not at all handsome in the classic sense, but he has a memorable face, square and angular with a broad forehead, and with the trilby he’s taken to wearing, along with his worn-out peacoat, he cuts out a sharp silhouette, usually softened only by the smoke of cigarettes which he still rolls himself. In rehearsals when his hands circle Lilia’s trim waist they feel broad and powerful, and her breath always catches in her throat. In that moment the two of them always hover poised at the apex of a _pas de deux_ through two realities: in one reality, he praises her, and because she is not yet as wise and hard as she will become later in life, a sweet blush spreads over the bridge of her nose. In another, he inevitably identifies three things she needs to do better if she expects to retain the Principal title. His disappointment is acerbic and cutting: although it is not like a knife. It is more like a fish-hook, something that will worm its way into her ribcage, and pull her apart at the seams. He will be disappointed with what he finds, even then, nothing human or messy for him to rip to pieces: Lilia has spent all of her time tuning herself like a pristine, perfect clock; she has a mind of turning gears and a body of levers and springs. She is a machine. 

She is a toy he winds up and makes spin at his leisure.

 

\- - -

 

Various members of the company are stretching for the first general rehearsal of the new season when Yakov bursts through the door like a hurricane. Behind him are two new faces, people Lilia has never met and yet still recognizes instantly. The Italian man with the dramatic ponytail is Celestino Cialdini, an up-and-coming choreographer from Milan, and the Japanese woman who stands nearby can only be Okukawa Minako, who won the first-ever _Benois de la Danse_ just last year, surprising everyone who expected it to go to a Russian ballerina instead. It had stung then, back when Lilia was dry-heaving in a bathroom, telling herself she should have known she wouldn’t win and already making plans to shave off a pound or two, to adjust her practice regimen for upcoming juries. It stings worse now, with Minako here, invading the Bolshoi, disrupter of Lilia’s dreams as flesh and blood in a way that she hadn’t been on the night of the awards, an illusory spirit accepting the trophy on stage. 

Lilia has always been described with words that are only ever qualifiers for beauty: her face is angular and her eyes are piercing and so she is called _striking_. Her impeccable technique is the result of years and years of discipline, but it has never been called _natural_. Natural is a word reserved for Minako, who moves like a cat as she crosses the room to pick out a place at the barre and bends into a deep stretch. Worse, she is _beautiful_ , too.

“We are premiering Celestino’s new work at the end of the season, so he’ll be here off-and-on while we develop it,” Yakov announces, shattering Lilia’s thoughts. He knows how to command a room; every single body in the space bends towards him. “And Ms. Okukawa has graciously agreed to join us as a guest artist for the entire season.”

A guest artist. The entire season. Suddenly access into all of the roles Lilia has imagined and dreamed of ever since childhood is thrown into question. The only defense mechanism she has against this kind of assault is routine, so Lilia hurls herself into it: she bends and stretches, takes one breath and one step at a time. Folds herself into something inhuman and then twirls on a point. She is better at these techniques than any other woman on earth and still the prize went to someone else, and that someone is here, now, at her theater, invading her life. She steadies the trembling that threatens her limbs with the force of her will. 

She does not know enough about herself to recognize it as rage.

 

\- - -

 

The season opens with Stravinsky’s _Firebird_ , selected as a compromise between Yakov and the traditionalists who expect to see a Russian name on opening night’s bill. He gets his way with costuming, experimenting with full-body unitards, flesh-toned except for the burst of orange which erupts from Lilia’s waist and which marks her as the ballet’s titular creature. During costume fittings, Lilia inspects herself for hours in front of the mirror, studying the way spandex clings to her every curve. Okukawa has no qualms in surprising her in the dressing room, pressing her palms to Lilia's hipbones and giving her a full-body shake that startles Lilia to her bones. “Relax,” she laughs. She is a good three or four inches shorter than Lilia is, petite and proportioned, the way ballerinas are supposed to be. “You’re _supposed_ to have muscles, for fuck’s sake.” Minako leans closer still, and Lilia can feel the heat of her body against her back. It’s a sensation Lilia has felt countless times before, in rehearsals with the _premier danseur_ , but it grates on her here. So does Minako’s chin on her shoulder and the way Minako’s breathy, delighted laugh tickles her ear. “God, you’re so uptight.” She doesn’t say it, but Lilia hears it, sees it reflected back in Minako’s mischievous smile: _no wonder I beat you last year._

 

\- - -

 

At the Opening Gala, Minako gets special dispensation to show up a little bit late to the dress call: as their special guest for the season, she’s sent to smile and shake hands with the ballet’s richest patrons. Cialdini is expected to be present, too, in the final days before he returns to Milan. “Don’t you think I ought to stop by, early-on,” Lilia wonders, in the final event preparations. 

Yakov scoffs. “Nonsense,” he says, and perhaps for once he sees the way he makes her burn, because he places his hands on her shoulders and leans forward to kiss one high cheekbone. “It’s your premiere,” he reminds her. “We want it to be spectacular.” 

Lilia is still pondering this as she sits in makeup on opening night, touching the same spot on her cheek when Minako breezes in, followed by Cialdini himself. She is in a gorgeous scarlet gown with a deep, open back, and Celestino’s hand lingers on the skin at the small of her back for a moment too long. His shirt is tucked in crooked, and hastily, at that. Someone needs to straighten his tie.  The choreographer wishes them all good luck with a too-broad, too-satisfied smile which Minako barely acknowledges as he makes himself scarce. Instead she discards the gown—Lilia sees sinew and flesh and the lace of a black thong in the edge of her mirror. Then Minako is sitting next to her, smug as a cat. Her cheshire smile is a dare: _try and say it. Imply I’ve fucked my way to the top._

Lilia does not rise to the bait, but she thinks about it backstage as she watches the ensemble part of the performance. She is not precisely a stranger to sex, but she has no time for entanglements now. It’s the logistics of their coupling that she ponders: the dark corners of a box still empty during the dinner hours, Minako on her knees, getting lipstick all over Cialdini’s cock. Maybe he took her up against the wall in a closet somewhere. Perhaps she’s still feeling him, even now, as she leaps across the stage and looks like anything but someone who’d been enjoying a quick fuck with this season’s most celebrated choreographer just before this performance. _Yakov wouldn’t approve,_ Lilia tells herself, letting her anger simmer, but what Yakov tells her when it’s all over is:

“Your performance had an edge tonight.” One corner of his mouth rises higher than the other in a sardonic smile that makes something in Lilia’s stomach twist. “I liked it.” 

 

\- - -

 

The show goes on. _Firebird_ closes and is replaced by a triptych of meditations on the music of Shostakovich. Yakov talks animatedly and at length about the composer and the death-dance with Stalin that he spent most of his professional life locked in. “He wrote a symphony about the revolution, sure,” he says, waving a cigarette, “but he also slept on the stairwell at night, sometimes, because he didn’t want the KGB coming to arrest him to traumatize his wife and children. And then, then, ah! He outlives the murderer and goes on to write _Babi Yar_ , and to tell his students they must shout about Soviet anti-Semitism from the rooftops...” Listening, Lilia understands him slightly better, this thundering man named after Isaac’s scheming son, Jacob. Forever grasping for his birthright, wrestling the angel. “ _This_ is context for our narrative,” he insists, and he makes Minako, not Lilia, stand, so that he can stalk her about the stage through the opening sequence. “We must show it thus, the complexity of his mind, the subtlety with which he threaded his dissent into everything he did and how he outlasted his opponent … No, no, no!” For once, he waves Minako off, uncharacteristically dismissive of her. Lilia’s heart sings with the rejection of it. “Where is she, _мышка_?” _Little mouse._ “Ah, there. Lilia. You will understand this better. You are quite close with dread, yes?” 

Lilia does not want to be a mouse. And she hates Minako’s satisfied smile, ever and always the cat who’s gotten into the cream. Nonetheless she rises to stand opposite Yakov, and lets him demonstrate time and time again to their lead danseur of all the different ways in which she’s to be pushed into a corner for the next month.

On the night of their final performance of the Shostakovich set, Lilia finds an origami mouse left on her dressing table, made out of a flyer for the club the rest of the cast has been planning a closing party at for weeks. Between the creases, she detects a hint of handwriting, and unfolds it to read, in English: _does the mouse ever play?_ Lilia crumples the page into a ball in one hand, and resolves to nip this insolence in the bud. She is the Primadonna of the Bolshoi Ballet, and she is tired of being trifled with. Tonight, she decides, she is going to drink Minako Okukawa under a table, and if she is very lucky, into the Moskva.

The club proves to be everything Lilia knew she would hate from the moment she steps inside. It’s packed with revelers intent on expressing every one of their newfound freedoms all at once, as loudly and terribly as possible. “Do you drink?” Minako shouts. English is the last thing Lilia wants to translate over the thundering bass, so she doesn’t bother; she simply offers Minako a pointed stare and heads to the bar. _Does she drink._ She is a Russian woman and Minako is an interloper. 

The first shot burns. In the dark, Minako’s smile somehow grows more teeth. 

From there, the night passes in a blur. Minako flits in and out of its edges like a moth on the edge of a lantern, frequently departing the bar to join the throng of people out on the dance floor and ensnare strangers she has no hope of sharing a language with. Not that Minako needs to talk. What she does with her body can hardly be called dancing, by Lilia’s standards, but the way Minako moves seems to activate something primal and reptilian in every person she drags into her radius. Even Lilia is not immune to this gravity; Minako pulls her out into the crowd, and then invades her space with a wicked smile and nimble fingers that go to work letting Lilia’s hair out of its unforgiving bun. Whatever game Minako is playing at now, she has underestimated her opponent if she thinks Lilia’s simply going to tap out because of her own discomfort. Lilia has been uncomfortable for years. It’s a familiar landscape. A place that finally gives her the upper ground.

Minako’s words slur together, impossible to hear, and she abruptly drags Lilia along to a side exit. Only after the door into the alley closes behind them does Lilia process that she’d been threatening to puke, and only because Minako’s made good on her promise, and thrown up twice against the brick. Lilia leans against the opposite wall, letting the cold air sober her up, and says nothing. She’s not kind enough to offer help, and she doubts Minako’s in the habit of accepting it. Instead, she watches as Minako wipes her mouth and hyena-barks a laugh. The other woman wobbles on her feet, and then pats down her pockets for a cigarette tin: not actual cigarettes, Lilia learns, but a pouch of herbs and the papers to accompany them. After her fingers twitch and ruin the first attempt, Minako sits down right there in the alleyway, not five feet away from her own vomit, and rolls a joint. “Want one?” Lilia shakes her head to decline, wrinkling her nose at the smell as Minako lights up and smokes. It’s sharper and greener than the acrid tang that clings to Yakov after he smokes; dark and sickly-sweet, like the black forests of dangerous fairytales. “Suit yourself,” Minako adds. Even now, she manages to inject extra meaning into the two simple words: _all work and no play has made Lilia Baranovskaya a dull, boring girl._

Lilia feels her teeth grind. Considers. “Can you even get home like this?” She inquires. It’s late, late enough that Minako, who speaks only the words in Russian which directly related to ballet, has no business staggering back to wherever she lives on her own. Lilia realizes she doesn’t even know where that is, and immediately decides she also doesn’t care. “You’re a mess.”

“You’re one to talk.” Snorts Minako. She takes another deep drag, and exhales, purposefully blowing smoke in Lilia’s direction. When she stands she does so coltishly, suddenly out of sync with her own limbs. _“Prude.”_

Lilia bristles. “It’s unprofessional,” she says, tonelessly. “Yakov wouldn’t want his dancers—”

_“His dancers!”_ Minako nearly howls the words, plunging into Lilia’s space with a sudden incredulity that borders on fury. “ _His_ , you say, like he fucking _owns_ you. That monster you love and all the lithe, beautiful bodies he’s surrounded by. Can you imagine what we must do to him in his dreams?” The look Minako gives her is scathing. “God, and you’d still get on your knees for him.” 

“What, like you did with Cialdini?” Lilia retorts. She thinks back to opening night and feels suddenly vindicated; Minako’s projecting, throwing misery in the direction of anyone willing to catch it. But thinking of Minako as miserable doesn’t feel as good as Lilia had hoped: it makes them more alike than different. _Prude_ , said Minako. _Slut_ , thinks Lilia. But Minako’s lips curl and her eyes gleam, and Lilia doesn’t get the chance to consider whether or not she’s miscalculated.

“We paid off the valet.” Minako crows. “I sucked him off for a bit and then rode him in that ridiculous Italian convertible nobody in Moscow can afford to drive, even your precious Yakov. He came too soon. The men always do. They never last the way a woman can.” That Minako has even collected this knowledge ought to be shocking, but Lilia is long past surprise. “I fingered myself until he could manage a second round.” She offers these details casually, carelessly, as though it were normal to lay bare every intimate encounter. Lilia suspects that for Minako, perhaps, sex is the least intimate part. Maybe real intimacy with Minako feels like _this_ \-- feels like being pulled apart. “After I got off, I told him to jerk off on his own. It’s the least he could do. And the whole time, I didn’t have to shake hands or smile or act available for any one of the Bolshoi’s fucking patrons. Look at what they ask of us. Look at what they make you do.” Minako’s eyes turn sharp. “You’re not _jealous_ , are you?”

“I don’t care what you do with the choreographer.” Lilia keeps her tone cool and even, which is no different than investing such extraordinary energy into the illusion of weightlessness. Nobody needs to see what goes on underneath. Nobody wants to.

“No,” agrees Minako, “but I think you’ll snap and wring my neck yourself if I ever fuck Feltsman.” She says it like it’s an inevitability, like someday Yakov will set her up on his desk, and she’ll wrap her legs around his waist. Or perhaps the inevitable part is Lilia’s hands around her throat. 

_Don’t_ , Lilia nearly says, but can’t bring herself to do it. She is strong and untouchable, the Principal of the Bolshoi. She is not like Giselle after all, not the sort of woman who will die of a broken heart. If she tells herself this often enough, it will become true. “You’re not that important,” she says instead, but it feels like a lie. “I’ll get you a cab.”

That night she dreams of the three of them together, and not in the way she’s always thought of Yakov, in aching secret. In those fantasies, they lie together the way reputable lovers do, and Yakov strokes her cheek, distant as he gently rocks himself into his own ecstasy. This vision is far more feral; he has Minako on all fours, moving furiously behind her, with a fist tangle into her hair. It’s all he needs to guide her head down into the open vee of Lilia’s parted legs. When Lilia wakes, the need to finish -- like a chord left hanging, unresolved -- outweighs her own shame, and presses her fingers into the ache between her legs. _I sucked him off for a bit,_ Minako had said, so careless with herself, so used to a body made to be good at everything. The fantasy blurs; Yakov is Lilia’s fingers as they slide deep inside herself, but it’s Minako’s mouth she imagines whenever she finds that one bud full of nerves and twists it between her thumb and forefinger. It takes far too long to work her way to an orgasm, and even that comes clumsily. 

_Minako would never be clumsy,_ Lilia chides herself, and then she shakes the thought off. Tells herself she doesn’t give a shit. Oddly enough, that is a very Minako sort of thing to think.

 

\- - -

 

Winter arrives, and even Yakov can’t avoid the inevitability that is the Nutcracker; the Bolshoi needs the full house at the holidays, full of families and little girls who will someday be fed to the theatre the way Lilia once was. Afterwards, there’s always a formal holiday ball, just before New Years’ Eve. Lilia spends longer than she should deciding what to wear, and the dress costs more than it should, made out of a delicate burgundy satin that’s dark like pinot noir, with a matching silk chiffon wrap. None of it will stave off Moscow’s cold as it seeps in through the Bolshoi’s drafty places, but Yakov smiles as he escorts her in, and tells her how jewel tones bring out the citrine of her eyes. Lilia folds the complement away; stores it in the secret recesses of her heart. 

Minako shows up forty-five minutes late, in a spaghetti-strapped, gunmetal number, barely more than a silk slip. She’s so nonchalant that for a moment all Lilia can think about is Jackson Pollock and his whirling paint cans, somehow making art out of all of the places where a mess is supposed to be instead. _If I ever fuck Feltsman,_ she’d said. Lilia pats Yakov on the arm, disinclined to share, and excuses them both from a conversation with some of the Bolshoi’s long-standing patrons. The musicians are playing. “Mr. Feltsman owes me a dance,” she explains, though he’s made her no such promises. 

“That was rude,” Yakov murmurs, with a wry smile. It’s exactly the sort of thing Yakov always says, ever a critic, relentless in his pursuit of perfection. Still, he effortlessly leads her into the holiday waltz; they dance well together, each from a position of strength and technique, and he’s handsome in his tuxedo, very nearly charming, the way she must be very nearly beautiful. The company makes way out of habit, until they whirl together at the center of the ballroom. 

Lilia tries and fails to redirect her thoughts away from that alleway conversation from months ago. “Only a little,” she demurs finally. And when he tells her that she can make it up to Mr. Kuznetzov by dancing with him later, she doesn’t disagree. _Look at what they ask of us. Look at what they make you do._

It’s one dance with one donor. Except that Yakov takes that turn to dance with Minako, which makes Lilia see red and turns the whole evening on its head. When he finds her at the bar, washing down her first glass of champagne with a second, Yakov steers them out of the ballroom and out onto a frozen balcony. This time Lilia resists his direction, but his fingers tighten in the crook of her arm, firm as iron; later she will still see red marks there, like a brand. “What has gotten into you?” Yakov asks, scowling. 

The answer is complicated. It has something to do with a fairytale Lilia has built her entire life around, and the way it keeps unraveling in her hands. “Would it kill you,” she asks, finally, “for you to be kind to me, for one night?”

It renders his expression unreadable. “This is about Okukawa,” Yakov says, tonelessly. He pinches the bridge of his nose as if to stave off some sort of headache, and some part of Lilia wants to savage him for it, for the way in which he’s crafted a world where _her_ feelings are always the problem. “Did you expect me to ignore the season’s guest artist? Would that have satisfied your ego?”

“A guest artist _you_ insisted we needed, after _you_ made me Principal,” Lilia says. _Do you have any idea what that feels like,_ she wants to scream, but the words always catch in her throat. _To have a long shadow thrown over your legacy by someone you love?_

That is, of course, the problem: she loves him and they both know it. Yakov looks at her for a long moment in a worrisome silence. Lilia would almost prefer his rages. “I did do that,” he says. “I thought maybe you would do something original. But this --” and here, he gestures between the two of them, frown deepening to such a degree that she can see the way it will carve lines into his face once he’s older, “ -- this is tedious, _Lilechka_. It is unoriginal to its core.” He jerks his head back towards the door, dismissive. “Go back inside. You wanted to be the Queen, and your court awaits.”

Of course, Minako catches her at the bar again later. “Lovers’ tiff?” She asks.

“Fuck off,” Lilia mutters. She isn’t in the habit of cursing aloud; it’s unladylike and crude. Minako’s delighted laugh catches her by surprise, and when Lilia turns to scowl at it, the entire room tilts, makes evident just how much she’s had to drink and how little she’s eaten to keep apace.

She’s surprised to find that Minako has steadied her before the spin carries her off her heels. “If only,” quips Minako, who gets an  arm around Lilia’s waist with ease. “Let’s get you a cab,” she says, in an inverse of autumn, “Ms. _Professional_.” Unlike Lilia, who’d once thrust Minako into a cab and hoped for the worst, Minako rides with her to her flat. They proceed together up four flights of stairs; Lilia refuses to take her shoes off and Minako attempts to help her up the long and stumbling climb, more often in the way than not. Lilia gamely attempts to ignore her peals of laughter, but a surprising thing happens: her own lips also twitch. Soon she’s in her own kitchen, laughing too, being coerced into a glass of water by a woman she’s sure she hates.

The glass makes a definite _clink_ as she sets it down, resounding, and suddenly everything centers on Minako, angled against Lilia’s fridge, strangely expectant, and Lilia, always taller, craning her head down to slant their lips together. _They never last the way a woman can._ Minako’s words, again. They’re like a poison, sunk into the bloodstream, only now doing the real work.

“I thought you’d never get around to it,” Minako hums when they break apart, and she presses her lips to the long column of Lilia’s throat before Lilia has a chance to come to her senses. Somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom, Minako’s dress slips off like water, and Lilia’s fingertips burn as she traces Minako’s hips, feels for the curve of her breasts. The body against hers feels smooth and soft where Lilia is all angles and edges, and it belies its own strength.

It’s been a very, very long time, Lilia thinks. And she’s so tired of being alone. So when Minako turns Lilia around and unzips the satin dress, tracing wet kisses down each knob of her spine, Lilia lets her. She’s promptly pushed into her own bed by the smaller woman, who drives a knee in-between Lilia’s aching thighs. Minako hovers over her, a wild vision in the dark; Lilia’s hungry fingers have ruined her hair. Minako takes her time stripping out of her lacy black underwear, like even this is a stage, a place she can claim eyes. As she does so, she notices the constellation of freckles that dot Lilia’s pale shoulders, leans over to kiss them, finds the mole on her ribcage and kisses it, too, before moving onto the underside of Lilia’s breasts. When Minako’s fingers finally brush over a pert, dusky nipple, Lilia arches into her hands, and this time she does not entirely hate the chuckle that resounds in the dark. “If you’re good,” Minako teases, already laving her tongue into the hollow of Lilia’s stomach, “I’ll show you something nice.”

Lilia _aches_. And she burns. “I’m always good,” she gasps, nonsensical, intoxicated. _It’s what leaves room for you to be so bad._

Minako hums, hooking her fingers into Lilia’s underwear. “You could be a little bad,” she murmurs, but it’s the last thing she says before she’s applied that talented tongue to the warm, wet place between Lilia’s thighs.

Minako has sex the way she dances, relentlessly and easily all at once, and there are tears in Lilia’s eyes when Minako rips her third orgasm out of her. It startles Lilia, leaving her shivering all over and feeling dangerously exposed. “Princess,” Minako teases, nibbling on an ear, “why are you crying?”

“... I wanted you to be him,” Lilia admits, and perhaps that’s why Minako finally relents.

“You know,” she says, “I think you really did.”

_This will be a one time thing,_ Lilia tells herself as she falls asleep. _A singular mistake._

 

\- - -

 

It isn’t a one time thing. After the holidays, Yakov makes them both learn the Lamentation solo on the schedule for the next series of performances. It’s a four minute monolith conducted by a single soloist on a bench, stifled by fabric, and everything about it makes Lilia uncomfortable, from the stark Kodály of the accompaniment to the awkward choreography. Minako takes to it naturally; _of course she does,_ and Lilia feels an imminent substitution hanging over her head like a guillotine. “Tell me how you do it,” she insists, after they’ve fucked in a dressing room after a particularly ruinous rehearsal, Minako on the table against the mirror and Lilia feeling carpet-burn on her knees and scratches across her shoulders.

“I’d have thought you’d be better at it,” Minako admits, with a long, lazy stretch. “Isn’t it how you already feel?” When Lilia reminds her that they’re actresses, that people aren’t here to see how _they_ feel, Minako doesn’t let her off the hook. “Sounds like that’s your problem.” 

They’re sharing a bottle of vodka Minako’s snuck into her dressing room for weeks now. “It’s not as easy for me as it is for you,” Lilia mutters. It isn’t that Minako doesn’t put in the work; it’s that Lilia has to grasp and fight for it, with tooth and claw and nail, that every victory leaves her battered and bloodied for her art. _Besides_ , she thinks, _people come here to see princesses and fairies. They aren’t here to watch ordinary women, ripping themselves apart._

“You know what I think?” Minako asks. Lilia never does, so she merely shrugs her shoulders. “I think you’ve spent so much time trying to make yourself fit everyone else’s version of perfect that you actually don’t know shit about it yourself.” When Lilia snorts, incredulously, Minako’s reprisal is swift. “Beauty,” she says, tonelessly. “Love. You know, anything that actually matters.” She rakes a fingernail up Lilia’s bare ribcage, narrows her eyes. “You’ve got no fucking idea. You’re starved for it.”

In the end, Yakov lets her keep the solo, but it feels like a concession. Lilia imagines it’s the talk of the whole company, whispered behind her back. As usual, Minako flays her for it; the fact that they’re having sex more times than Lilia cares to admit changes nothing. “It’s pretty simple,” she says. “If you’ve decided you’re not any good then you won’t be.”

 

\- - -

 

When Cialdini returns for the final show of the season, Yakov admits that he’s considering giving the lead role to Minako. “Don’t take it too personally, Lilia,” he advises. “Celestino likes her for it and it’s his world premiere.” 

It has taken all season to arrive at this moment, the thing Lilia’s dreaded all season. She closes her eyes in anticipation of a pain that doesn’t come. No, she thinks, or maybe says, but suddenly it comes out more firmly. “No.” Yakov is standing behind his desk; Lilia finds her feet and walks around it. Now that the moment has finally arrived, she’s free of her fear of it. All along she’s expected a broken heart, a kind of shattering, and instead what she’s discovered is a burning fury, bright as starlight.

“No?” Yakov inquires, raising an eyebrow. And before he can remind her that he’s the Bolshoi’s Creative Director, _the boss,_ King of this Kingdom, Lilia abruptly pushes him back into his chair. 

“I am the Primadonna of the Bolshoi Ballet,” she tells him, firmly, palm still spread over his chest. “And you have dangled Minako Okukawa over my head for long enough, Yakov Feltsman.” 

“Is that what I’ve been doing?” Yakov asks. The wry quirk of his mouth gives him away; Lilia slaps it off his face and feels a roaring satisfaction at the red mark she leaves on Yakov’s cheek. He retaliates by catching her wrist and yanking her close; dragged forward, Lilia sinks a knee between his legs on the chair. 

“Enough liberties, _Yasha_ ,” she says. This close, she can see herself reflected in the steely blue of his eyes; strong, powerful, a force  to be reckoned with. His hand around her wrist softens imperceptibly; she rubs the fading handprint out of his face. “This is mine,” Lilia says, as his free hand finds the curve of her waist. _The role is mine. The ballet is mine. You are mine._ All of it is hers. “You don’t get to take it from me.”

His mouth on hers is demanding, but Lilia does not yield; she bites at his lips, rakes her fingers along his shoulders. And when Yakov sets her back on his desk, Lilia simply arches an eyebrow and parts her legs, looking pointedly down at the floor. “Be a good boy,” she says, these are Minako’s words, coming from her mouth. _You could be a little bad._ “And I’ll show you something nice.”

The immense satisfaction she gets from seeing him on his knees is nearly better than the sex itself, though that comes with its own rewards: when Lilia finally straddles him and begins to pick him apart at the seams, furiously resisting his every attempt to assume control—over her, her body, the Bolshoi, anything, she finally arrives at the epiphany of her own power. _Beauty,_ she realizes, sinking down to meet the hard lines of the man who she loves precisely _because_ he’s a monster, _is a force._

 

\- - -

 

They see Minako and Celestino off at the airport when the season is over; Cialdini back to Milan and Minako off to the Royal Ballet. It’s as neat an ending as any; Lilia’d let her into the flat one last time just three days ago for a last rendezvous she has no intention of ever declaring to Yakov. Minako’s air-kisses of farewell linger overlong next to Lilia’s cheek before she flashes a grin and turns to board, and the season that started with fireworks goes out without even a lingering sense of smoke or sizzle.

“That’s that,” Yakov murmurs, his palm low on Lilia’s back as they navigate back through the airport and out to his car. 

“Did you get what you wanted out of them?” Lilia asks, idle, conversational. They have a dinner date tonight; perfunctory, really, when what she wants to do is render him incoherent with praise, claw apart his sense of control, carve out a place under his skin that he’ll never be able to take back. Yakov briefly reflects her wry, knowing smile in the overhead mirror. 

“I’m not allowed to be all things to you,” he says, momentarily rendered — not-quite earnest, it doesn’t suit him — but close. “My job is to make you a better dancer.”

_You’d suffer so much for him,_ Minako told her once. _What are you going to take for yourself?_

“You’re a bastard,” Lilia says. _Everything,_ she thinks, now. _I’m going to take everything._

“See,” Yakov replies, “Now we finally understand each other.” 


End file.
